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Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Why Isn't GNU Radio Used More?


From: Scott Johnston
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Why Isn't GNU Radio Used More?
Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 11:25:02 -0400
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 (X11/20100721)

In addition to Marcus's comments, a lot of people using GNUradio, myself included, are not software developers by training. They/we are electrical engineers interested more in the DSP, communications, and RF applications than figuring out to put together an application from hundreds of disparate modules with little to no documentation. Compare using Matlab to GNuradio: In matlab you can search through hundreds of help pages that have examples on how to use every single matlab command and the exact syntax required, whereas with GNUradio, you either spend hours trudging through source code and webforums or rely on the kindness of strangers to point you in the right direction by using this list.

GnuRadio is very nice package but the barrier to entry is quite high.

Scott

Marcus D. Leech wrote:
On 09/05/2011 8:53 AM, Michael Dickens wrote:
Can we bring Tom's post to this list?

<  
http://gnuradio.squarespace.com/home/2011/5/8/why-isnt-gnu-radio-used-more.html>

Yes, I do actually read his posts ;)  I hope others do too; he writes with 
clarity and has things to say if you're into SDR and GNU Radio.

I hope Tom's post sparks some good discussion -- not just with me or Tom (or 
the usual GNU Radio cohorts), but with more casual users as well since (I 
believe) they make up the majority of the folks trying to use GNU Radio.  I 
will post my initial comments shortly, but I wanted to get this discussion 
going. - MLD


I think there's a significant community out there that learned DSP techniques inside the envelope of Matlab/Simulink, and that's what they're comfortable with. To change this, Gnu Radio has to appear in more places in academia, so that graduating engineers have already been exposed to it, and find it "natural".

The documentation, as Tom observed, is disorganized and incomplete. This is rather an inevitable result of a system that grows organically as it has--99% of the contributing participants are largely coders, and not so much document writers.

There's a fear of Python, both because a surprising number of folks don't know Python, and also because there's some (largely-misplaced) fear that a Python-based application will be far too slow for their application. There's still ignorance about GnuRadio Companion--I think a lot of folks think that it's only useful for "initial tinkering and playing around". But I've constructed entire applications with it, and if it were better documented, more people would likely use it for production work. The XMLRPC server feature, for example, isn't well understood by most follks, but I use it in two of
my applications to great advantage.




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Scott Johnston
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